Earth Day: making Travel Trade Consultancy more sustainable

Earth Day is an annual event on 22 April to demonstrate support for the protection of the environment. This year the theme is ‘Invest In Our Planet’, which highlights the importance of using time, resources, and energy to help solve environmental issues.

Sustainability at Travel Trade Consultancy. 

Sustainability is something we are very passionate about at TTC. We are continually looking for ways to improve our carbon footprint and give back to the planet. As a small team, trying to create a sustainable model and adapt, grow and implement sustainable measures doesn’t come without its challenges. However, in honour of Earth Day, we wanted to share some of the ideas we’ve started to implement throughout the year to make our business more sustainable. You can also take a look at what we did last year for Earth Hour, which takes place in March.

Ways we’re investing: 

Education 

Last year we introduced an internal monthly newsletter to keep everyone in the company better connected. We’ve also been using this as a platform to educate them on sustainability topics. We’ve started to invest in our team’s education on sustainability by funding sustainability training courses and conferences. We have attended ABTA’s Delivering Sustainable Travel Conference, TTG’s Fairer Travel Sustainability Forum, and ABTA’s Carbon Literacy for Travel and Tourism training.

Giving back

You may have seen the team participation in Kindness Bingo, a wellbeing initiative to encourage us to be kind to our physical and mental health, but also included giving back to others and the environment. Challenges included litter picking, which helps to keep the environment safe for wildlife, and making bird feeders, which can help population growth in some bird species. Winners of the game donated to nine charities which supported animals, health research and sustainable initiatives. 

Enlisting the experts

We’ve been working with Terraverde Solutions to measure our company’s emissions accurately. With a hybrid working model, this has involved the whole team looking at their individual energy usage. We expect to have our first carbon report ready this quarter. We’re excited to use the data to inform new policies that will help further reduce our impact on the environment.

New office

As our team grows, we have recognised a need for permanent office space, and as a result, we have invested in a new office space. When choosing our new office space, sustainability was at the forefront of our minds. We ensured the location was central and easy to access using public transport for everyone in the team. The space needed to share our values on social and environmental issues which is why we chose our space at Work.Life – a certified B Corp.

We hope these tips provide you with some ideas for sustainable practices within your small business.